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Policies addressing health information privacy are important due to the damaging effects of inappropriate disclosure, and also because they revive long-standing controversies, such as prevalence of individual rights over group interests, trust in various levels of government, and the degree of governmental involvement in protecting citizens? rights and regulating businesses. Both Canada and the United States offer a multi-level framework of privacy protections resulting from legal precedent (common law), state/provincial laws and regulations, and federal legislation. In Canada, the federal privacy law, PIPEDA, fully implemented in January 2004 is viewed as an unprecedented intrusion into traditional provincial domains, such as regulating physicians? practices. In the United States, HIPAA?s final health privacy rule, with a 2003-2004 implementation deadline and also disputed in courts, is complicated by partial preemption mechanisms that make uncertain the applicability of state legislation. This study brings together issues of health law and policy development. Using legislative summaries, interest group positions, media coverage data and public opinion polls, this study will discuss sources of health information privacy protection in Canada and the United States, and analyze the policy development processes, emphasizing the role of political institutions and national culture in defining the policy directions followed by the two nations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effects of judge gender are examined in the decisions of judges in the appellate courts of Australia, Canada and the United States. Overall, there were few significant differences in the voting choices of male and female judges in either the top court or the intermediate appellate courts of the three nations examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative survey of activist mobilizing to secure recognition of sexual diversity in Canadian and American public school systems, and of the extent to which public policy and schooling practice have responded. Until the 1990s, only scattered jurisdictions effected any significant change, often starting with ‘safe schools’ measures. Such change, and particularly in the area of anti-gay bullying, appears more widespread in the U.S. than Canada, not at all the pattern in other sexual diversity issues. Differences arise from religious, cultural, and institutional factors, and from Canadian-American contrasts in the extent to which sexual diversity provokes high stakes debates over other issues. As on all sexual diversity fronts, dramatic variation persists across U.S. regions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A comparative survey of activist mobilizing to secure recognition of gay and lesbian relationships in Canada and the United States, and of the extent to which public policy, law, and institutional policy among private employers has moved in directions sought by such activism. Such movement as has occurred depends on developments at national, regional, and local levels of government, as well as in the courts. Shifts toward equity have come faster and more uniformly in Canada than in the U.S.. A few American states and several localities have seen marked progress, but are hampered by the relative absence of change at the federal level. Variation in outcome depends on constitutional, legal, and institutional context, on party configerations, on labour union support, and to some extent on public opinion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The federal governments of Canda and the United States have taken very different directions to climate change policy, reflected in diametrically opposed stances on ratification of the Kyoto Protocol. However, pledges on the international stage do not always translate into domestic policy implementation. This paper examines the unexpected development whereby American states are far more active on climate change policy development than their Canadian provincial counterparts. It considers key forces that explain these differences, looking at both intergovernmental relations and intra-jurisdictional differences. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]